The Dead Sea Deception (5 page)

When it came to killing, Tillman was precise and professional, and his choice of drugs reflected this. The difference between an effective dose of Etomidate and a lethal one was about thirty to one for a healthy adult. These people would wake up sicker than parrots and weaker than puppies, but they’d wake up.

With that business concluded, Tillman went and sat by the window for a while, watching the street. The house was set back in its own grounds, the gates high and the walls topped with razor wire. To discourage uninvited guests no doubt. But he didn’t want to be surprised by an invited one, or a colleague or acquaintance coming around to find out why Kartoyev hadn’t shown up at some appointment or other. Once that happened, the house, the city and the entire Republic of Ingushetia would quickly become an escape-proof trap for Tillman. He had every reason to act fast.

But he had even better reasons to wait, so that was what he did. And because he was too tense to eat or drink, to read or to rest, he waited in stillness, staring out of the window into the bull grass and the monkey puzzle trees.

Tillman had been a mercenary for nine years. He’d never done interrogation work – he had no particular taste for it, and in his experience the men who specialised in it were profoundly damaged – but he’d seen it done and he knew the big secret, which was to make the subject do most of the heavy lifting for you. Kartoyev was a tough bastard, who’d clawed his way to his current position of eminence using the balls and throats of lesser mortals as handholds. But now he was lying on top of a contact mine, and his imagination would be feeding on itself in ferocious, toxic fast-forward. When a strong man is helpless, strength becomes weakness.

Tillman gave it two and a half hours before he went back up
to the bedroom. Kartoyev hadn’t moved a muscle, as far as Tillman could see. The man’s face had gone white, his eyes were wide, his lips slightly parted so you could see the clenched teeth within. ‘What was the name?’ he asked, in a low and very distinct tone. ‘Who do you want to know about?’

Tillman patted his pockets. ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘I wrote it down somewhere. Let me go check my jacket.’

As he turned back towards the door, Kartoyev made a horrible, ragged sound – as though he was trying to talk around a caltrop in the middle of his tongue. ‘No,’ he croaked. ‘Tell me!’

Tillman made a big show of thinking it over, coming to a decision. He crossed to the bed and sat down on the edge of it, placing his weight with exaggerated care. ‘The first time you lie to me,’ he said, ‘I’m giving up on you. You understand me? There are other guys on my list, other people this guy uses, so you’re completely expendable – to me, as well as to him. You lie to me, or you even hesitate in telling me everything you know, and I’m gone. In which case, it’s going to be a very long day for you.’

Kartoyev lowered his chin to his chest, then brought it up again, a slow-mo nod of acquiescence.

‘Michael Brand,’ Tillman said.

‘Brand?’ Kartoyev’s tone was pained, uncomprehending. Clearly he’d been expecting a different name. ‘Brand … isn’t anybody.’

‘I didn’t say he was important. I just said I want to know about him. So what have you got, Yanush? What does he come to you for? Weapons? Drugs? Women?’

The Russian drew a ragged breath. ‘Women, no. Never. Weapons, yes. Drugs … yes. Or at least, things that can be used to make drugs.’

‘What sort of volume are we talking about?’ Tillman was
careful to keep his voice level, not to let the urgency show, because the strength had to be all on his side. Any chink in his armour might make the Russian baulk.

‘For the weapons,’ Kartoyev muttered. ‘Not so very many. Not enough for an army, but enough – if you were a terrorist – to finance a medium-sized jihad. Guns: hundreds, rather than thousands. Ammunition. Grenades, one or two. But not explosives. He doesn’t seem to care much for bombs.’

‘And the drugs?’

‘Pure ephedrine. Anhydrous ammonia. Lithium.’

Tillman frowned. ‘So he’s brewing meth?’

‘I sell meth.’ Kartoyev sounded indignant. ‘I said to him once, if that’s what you want, Mr Brand, why take away these bulky and inconvenient raw materials? For a small surcharge, I’ll give you crystal or powder in any amount you like.’

‘And he said?’

‘He told me to fill his order. He said he had no need of anything else I could offer him.’

‘But the amounts?’ Tillman pursued. ‘Enough to sell, commercially?’

Kartoyev began to shake his head, winced. He’d been holding to a position of paralysed rigidity for several hours, and his muscles were agonisingly locked. ‘Not really,’ he grunted. ‘Recently, though – this last batch – much, much more than usual. A thousand times more.’

‘And it’s always Brand who collects and pays?’

Again, the look.
Why is he asking this?
‘Yes. Always … the man uses that name. Brand.’

‘Who does he represent?’

‘I have no idea. I saw no reason to ask.’

Tillman scowled. He stood up suddenly, rocking the bed a little and making Kartoyev cry out – a choked, premonitory wail
of anguish. But there was no explosion. ‘Bullshit,’ Tillman said, leaning over his captive. ‘A man like you doesn’t fly blind. Not even on small transactions. You’d find out everything you could about Brand. I already warned you about lying, you brain-dead scumbag. I think you just used up the last of my goodwill.’

‘No!’ Kartoyev was desperately earnest. ‘Of course, I tried. But I found nothing. There was no trail that led to him, or from him.’

Tillman considered, keeping his face impassive. As far as it went, that matched his own experience. ‘So how do you contact him?’

‘I don’t. Brand tells me what he needs, then he appears. Payment is in cash. He arranges his own transport. Cars, usually. Once, a truck. Always these are hired, under assumed names. When they’re returned, they’ve been scrubbed clean.’

‘How does Brand contact you?’

‘By telephone. Cellphones, always. Disposables, always. He identifies himself by a word.’

Tillman caught on this detail. It seemed unlikely: amateurish and unnecessary. ‘He doesn’t trust you to recognise his voice?’

‘For whatever reason. He identifies himself by a word.
Diatheke
.’

‘What does that mean?’

Kartoyev shook his head slowly, with great care, once only. ‘I don’t know what it means to him. To me it means Brand. That’s all.’

Tillman looked at his watch. He felt almost certain that the Russian had nothing more to tell, but time was against him. It was probably time to start packing up. But Kartoyev was the best lead he’d had in three years and it was hard to walk away without squeezing the last drop out of him.

‘I still don’t believe you’d let it go that easily,’ Tillman said,
staring down at the rigid, sweating man. ‘That you’d do business with him, year in and year out, without trying to figure out what he’s about.’

Kartoyev sighed. ‘I told you. I tried. Brand comes in on different routes, from different airports, and leaves, likewise, in different directions: sometimes by air, sometimes driving. He pays in a number of currencies – dollars, euros, sometimes even roubles. His needs are … eclectic. Not just the things you mentioned, but also, sometimes, legal technology illegally acquired. Generators. Medical equipment. Once, a surveillance truck, new, designed for the SVR – for Russian intelligence. Brand is a middle man, obviously. He fronts for many different interests. He acquires what is needed, for whoever is prepared to pay.’

A tremor went through Tillman, which he couldn’t suppress or keep from the Russian. ‘Yes,’ he agreed. ‘That’s what he does. But you say you’ve never sold him people.’

‘No.’ Kartoyev’s voice was tight. He could read the emotion in Tillman’s face and he was obviously concerned about what that loss of control might mean. ‘Not people. Not for work or for sex. Perhaps he sources those things elsewhere.’

‘Those
things
?’

‘Those commodities.’

Tillman shook his head. He was wearing a hangman’s dead-pan now. ‘Not much better.’

‘I’m a businessman,’ Kartoyev muttered, tightly, sardonic even in extremity. ‘You’ll have to forgive me.’

‘No,’ Tillman said. ‘There’s nothing that says I have to do that.’ He leaned down and reached underneath Kartoyev’s body. The Russian yelled again, in despair and rage, stiffening in a whole-body rictus as he braced for the blast.

Tillman pulled the squat, plastic box out from under him, letting the Russian see the blank, inert digital display and the
words –
ALARM, TIME, SET, ON-OFF
– printed in white on the black fascia. A foot of electric cable and a Continental-style plug dangled from the device, on which the maker’s name, Philip’s, was also prominently emblazoned. The alarm clock was of eighties vintage. Tillman had bought it under Zyazikov Bridge, from a Turk who had his meagre wares spread out on the plinth of the President’s statue.

Kartoyev’s incredulous laugh sounded like a sob. ‘Son of a whore!’ he grunted.

‘Where did Brand go this time?’ Tillman asked, slipping the question in fast and brisk. ‘When he left you?’

‘England,’ Kartoyev said. ‘He went to London.’

Tillman took the Unica from his belt, thumbed the safety in the same movement and shot Kartoyev in the left temple, angling the shot to the right. The mattress caught the bullet, and some of the sound, but Tillman wasn’t worried about the sound: the windows of the house had been triple-glazed and the walls were solid.

He packed his things quickly and methodically – the clock, the gun, the xeroxed sheet and the rest of the money from the safe. He’d already wiped the room for prints, but he did so again. Then he gave the dead man on the bed a valedictory nod, went downstairs and let himself out.

London. He thought about that dead ground in his mind, in his soul. He’d been away for a long time, and that hadn’t been an accident. But maybe there was a God after all, and his providence had a symmetrical shape.

The shape of a circle.

Stuart Barlow’s study had already been examined by the first case officer, but there were no evidence notes in the file and nothing had been taken. Searching it was going to be a daunting proposition: every surface was stacked with books and papers. The strata of folders and print-outs on the desk had spread out to colonise large areas of the floor on both sides, which at least had the effect of hiding some of the goose-turd-green carpet tiles. Prints of Hellenic statues and Egyptian karyatids, rippled inside their glass frames by seasons of damp English weather and bad central heating, stared down at the shambles with stern, unforgiving faces.

The small, cluttered space was claustrophobic, and indefinably sad. Kennedy wondered whether Barlow would have been ashamed to have his private chaos exposed to public scrutiny in this way, or if the heaped ramparts of notebooks and print-outs were a professional badge of pride.

‘Mr Barlow was in the history faculty,’ she remarked, turning to the bursar. Ellis had returned as promised to let them in, and now stood by with the key still in his hand, as if he expected the detectives to admit defeat when they saw the intractable mess of the dead man’s effects. ‘What did that entail? Did he have a full teaching schedule?’

‘Point eight,’ Ellis said, without a moment’s hesitation. ‘Five hours remission for administrative duties.’

‘Which were?’

‘He was second in department. And he ran Further Input – our gifted and talented programme.’

‘Was he good at his job?’ Kennedy demanded, bluntly.

Ellis blinked. ‘Very good. All our staff are good, but … well. Yes. Stuart was passionate about his subject. It was his hobby as well as his profession. He’d appeared on TV three or four times, on history and archaeology programmes. And his revision website was very popular with the students.’ A pause. ‘We’ll all miss him very much.’ Kennedy mentally translated that as: he put arses on seats.

Harper had picked up a book,
Russia Against Napoleon
, by Dominic Lieven. ‘Was this his specialism?’ he asked.

‘No.’ Again, Ellis was categorical. ‘His specialism was palaeography – the earliest written texts. It didn’t come into his teaching very much, because it’s a tiny part of our undergraduate syllabus, but he wrote a lot on the subject.’

‘Books?’ Kennedy asked.

‘Articles. Mostly focused on close textual analysis of the Dead Sea and Rylands finds. But he was working on a book – about the Gnostic sects, I think.’

Kennedy had no idea what the Gnostic sects were, but she let it pass. She wasn’t seriously considering the possibility that Professor Barlow had been murdered by an academic rival.

‘Do you know anything about his private life?’ she asked instead. ‘We know he wasn’t married, but was he involved with anyone?’

The bursar seemed surprised by the question, as though celibacy was a necessary side effect of the scholarly life. ‘I don’t think so,’ he said. ‘It’s possible, obviously, but he didn’t mention
anybody. And when he came to departmental functions, he never had anybody with him.’

That seemed to let out wronged husbands or jealous ex-lovers. The odds on finding a suspect were getting longer. But Kennedy had never had high hopes. In her experience, most of the work that solved a case was done in the first couple of hours. You didn’t return to a case that was three weeks cold and expect to jump the gap in one amazing bound.